KATIE HOLTEN
CRACK IN THE REAL
November 9 – December 21, 2013

We are delighted to present Katie Holten’s fourth solo exhibition at VAN HORN.

“Crack in the Real” shows a series of large-scale drawings in which Holten explores how the structures of humanity are intewoven with the natural world. In hommage to the Eames film ‘Power of Ten’, the drawings zoom from the macroscopic world of her on-going ‘city’ drawings, through Google clouds and flocks of birds, to the microscopic world of man-made growths, mould and bits of data.

I’m drawn to the macro and micro view of things—self-similar patterns found on different scales. The shape of river deltas is found to repeat at scales all the way down to cracks in the mud. We see this in man-made as well as organic structures—a simple underlying mathematics to it all.” –Katie Holten, Artforum, July 2012.

Fascinated by the power of drawing to simultaneously describe our individual, self-created worlds, and to map the vastness of human civilisation, Holten embraces drawing to create personal psycho-geographies. Holten sees science as an index of social history and power relations and imagines a parallel present, a fictional topography realised through line.

Katie Holten grew up in rural Ireland and lives and works in New York City. In 2003 she represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale. Her solo museum exhibitions include: New Orleans Museum of Art (2012); Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (2010); The Bronx Museum, New York (2009); Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany (2008) and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2007). She has received numerous awards including a Fulbright Scholarship (2004), a Pollock Krasner Award (2005), and bursaries from The Arts Council of Ireland (2005, 2010, 2012). Her work is in the collections of institutions such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Arts Council of Ireland; Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Nevada Museum of the Arts, Reno; European Patent Office, Munich; Villa Merkel/Stadt Esslingen. Holten is currently undertaking a MOOC course on Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute. She is collaborating with Nicholas Mosse Pottery in Ireland to create a set of ceramic plates, which will be used by Michelin Star chef Ross Lewis. She is also preparing for the Cartagena Biennial in Colombia in Spring 2014.

KATIE HOLTEN | GALLERY EXHIBITIONS